Tag Archives: mystical number seven

As was suggested by Jonathan in our previous series, this blog will be an exploration of the Book of Revelation (Book of the Apocalypse) in a mystical vein. In seminary back in the early 1980’s, this last book of the exoteric Bible was classified under Eschatology, or a science of the end-times. Although, it was never directly studied on its own since the excessive symbolic language has led to many false interpretations within the Christian milieu. As a biblical resource, The Jerome Biblical Commentary was our mainstay and we will be utilizing some passages of it under its recent incarnation, The [New] Jerome biblical Commentary. This present study could be considered to be an aberration from a Buddhist stance, since in Buddhism, time is cyclical, not linear, (the universe never begins nor ends) making apocalypse both an end and a beginning; whereas the Book of Revelation is decidedly about an ending to linear time, although scripture as a whole does assert that there will be a new heaven and a new earth. The original word in Greek — apokalypsis — refers to an unveiling, a revelation. As we shall come to see it’s not just about the end of the world, but rather an end to a particular cycle in time. Elaine Pagels, in her excellent work, Revelations: Vision, Prophecy & Politics in the Book of Revelation, cites that the writer of Revelation was referring to the way “his own” world ended. read more